LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



/ 






THE 



Protestant Reformation. 

ft %tituvt 
DELIVERED IN ST. ANN'S CHURCH 

ox 
SUNDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 1, 1S7S, 



BY THE 



VERY REV. THOMAS S PRESTON, V.G. 



Stenographically Reported for the Publisher 



>r the ruDiisner. 

Pcf* -A 

- 



NEW YORK : 
ROBERT CODDINGTON, 246 FOURTH AYENUE. 

1878. 






Copyright, 1878, 
By ROBERT CODBI^GTON 



^^GRAPHICALLY REPORTED BY *R. B. N. BOBBINS.' 



LECTURE. 



In the second general epistle of the Apostle St. 
John, and the ninth verse» are these words : " Who- 
soever revolteth and hath not the doctrine of Christ, 
hath not God." 

I am sure, my dear Christian brethren, that you 
will all agree with me that the subject to which I 
call your attention this evening is one of great im- 
portance. That movement which bears the name of 
the Reformation has been the cause of a large and 
fearful apostasy from the Church of God. Before 
that day, although there had been many heresies, 
yet, nevertheless, the unity of the Church and the 
apostolic tradition were not broken. From that 
day there came a large falling away of members 
from the one fold of Christ, and that movement 
has been so important that it has shaken empires, 
and, what is of far more consequence, it has been 
the ruin of the faith of multitudes. The infidelity 
of our age, the civil commotions which have over- 
turned the governments of many lands, are all owing 



to this so-called Reformation. The first remark 
which I make in regard to it is that either this 
religions movement was from God, and divinely 
inspired, or else it was a movement of the adver- 
sary of God and man. I am sure there is no one 
who can for one instant deny the plain and simple 
truth which I now utter ; for it altogether broke up 
the received doctrine, it altogether disturbed Chris- 
tianity, as Christianity had been known for fifteen 
centuries. Therefore, if this movement was from 
God, then rightly the Reformers called the Catholic 
Church and the Holy See Antichrist. If this move- 
ment be from God, then in all its phases, in all its 
consequences, God is the author of the Reforma- 
tion, and His divine Spirit is responsible for its 
results. I do not know that there is any subject 
on which there is more ignorance or more prejudice. 
Men have grown uj) with all the associations of 
their early childhood directed against the Church 
of God. History has been falsified in its every line, 
and children who speak the English language have 
been taught from their cradles upward that the 
Catholic Church was either Antichrist or the enemy 
of God ; and they have been trained to believe that 
in the sixteenth century men arose, guided by the 
Spirit of God, to reform that Church, to cast off the 
abuses which had gathered around it in the cen- 



turies preceding, and to bring to the world a pure 
Christianity. They have even been taught, and I 
myself in my earlier days was taught, to consider 
the Reformers as almost saints, as holy men, as men 
living in a pure atmosphere, men breathing the 
Spirit of God, men of self-denial, who were raised 
up by God to be His instruments. When we come 
to learn the sad, fearful truth that these men were 
immoral and unholy men ; that they were guided 
by selfish ends and by selfish motives, and that 
even the Christianity which they presented to the 
world was not only a jargon of Babel sounds, but 
a travesty of the divine revelation, we wonder at 
the lie which has deceived so many. For in the 
confusion that has arisen since, no sane mind, from 
their teachings, can learn anything of that which 
they call the primitive purity of Christian truth. 

My lectures, brief and imperfect as I know they 
must be, are addressed to the earnest and sincere. 
As for those who are infidels, who believe either in 
no God, or in a God who is not a God, I do not 
know that my words can reach them. Following 
the just consequences of the Reformation, they have 
thrown off altogether the very semblance of Chris- 
tian truth. They know not Christ, and as they 
know not Christ they know not God ; for God will 
only be known in and through His Incarnate Son. 



Bat there are — I know it well — earnest and sincere 
minds, led away by blindness and by prejudice, who 
hunger and thirst after some real and substantial 
truth, who would know Christ, whose hearts are 
moved towards Him as their Redeemer, the begin- 
ning and the end of their faith. To them these 
words of mine may come, by the blessing of the 
Divine Spirit, as words which may guide them to 
the haven of rest, the ark of God, to the Church of 
the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth, 
which, standing on the certainty of the divine vera- 
city, can no more be shaken than can the Throne 
of God itself. 

In the lecture which I propose to deliver to you 
this evening, and in which I shall consider espe- 
cially the Reformation on the Continent, I shall 
speak, first, of the causes which led to this move- 
ment ; secondly, of its first beginnings and the teach- 
ings of the so-called Reformers ; thirdly, I will dwell 
upon the characters of the Reformers themselves ; 
and, lastly, speak briefly of the sources of that suc- 
cess which has made this movement, in the begin- 
ning so small, almost to cover the Western earth. 

I. 

Among the causes which led to the Reforma- 
tion, and of which I can only speak for a few mo- 



ments, were, first, the long struggle of centuries 
between the Church and the temporal power. When 
our Lord brought His Church into the world and 
established it on the firm rock of Peter, the whole 
earth was arrayed against it, and for three centu- 
ries it fought its way in martyrdom and blood, and 
its altars were in the sepulchres of the martyrs.' 
When the Church became the master of the world 
through the conversion of the Roman emperor and 
of a considerable portion of his empire, the Church 
at once set upon the beneficent work of Christian- 
izing the earth. She reformed the world, she estab- 
lished the foundations of the social fabric, she 
taught men peace and amity, she brought the rela- 
tions of men to each other into the open light, and 
showed them their duty towards man and towards 
G-od. She established also the rierht of the ruler 



l o- 



and the right of the governed, and the rights of na- 
tions towards each other, and she also raised woman 
to a high dignity as the Christian mother and the 
Christian virgin. For a time the words of the pro- 
phecy of Isaias were fulfilled, and kings were her 
nursing fathers and queens her nursing mothers. 
For a time the converted emperors of the earth lent 
their strength to the great cause of Christianity, and 
the Church became sovereign over the world by the 
sound principles of Christian morality. Soon, how- 



ever, jealousy arose between the princes and the 
Church ; soon the emperors themselves sought to 
usurp the rights of the Vicar of Christ, and if the 
successor of St. Peter had been a mere temporal 
ruler he would long ago have bowed down and 
yielded under the pressure of arms and power ar- 
rayed on all sides against him. But he who stood 
in the strength of God could not yield to anything 
but right and truth ; therefore he stood forth in the 
nobility of his office and of his divine character, as 
the defender of the rights of men, the supporter of 
truth, both for the governor and the governed. Yet 
he was not able to quench the lawless ambition of 
princes, and princes were not satisfied with even 
their own temporal power ; they sought to usurp 
ecclesiastical power — to take the bishops and the 
government of their dioceses into their own hands, 
and to usurp for themselves the right of investiture 
to holy offices — not the right of temporal appoint- 
ment, but the right of ecclesiastical investiture. 
Here came a long war, the war of confessors and 
martyrs, a war which made Gregory, of glorious 
memory, die in exile ; a war which has ennobled so 
many of the Roman pontiffs as the defenders of 
right and true liberty. But from time to time the 
emperors succeeded, from time to time the Vicars of 
Christ were prisoners, or exiles, or martyrs, and the 



powers of the earth seized upon the rights which 
belonged to the Church, and, as a consequence of all 
this, there came depravation of morals. When the 
bishops were either appointed or invested without 
the rightful control of the Holy See they were un- 
worthy of their office. A bishop who would be un- 
faithful to the Vicars of Christ was unworthy of his 
place in the sacred hierarchy of Christ, and even 
those bishops who were worthy, and who stood 
around the Holy See, were stripped of their power 
for reformation or for discipline. So there came 
simony and the sale of benefices, and the deprava- 
tion of morals followed. Because the episcopate 
was fettered there existed not the power to enforce 
the discipline which belonged to the prelates of the 
Church of Christ. And, again, beyond these causes, 
which lay, perhaps, on the outside of the Church, 
there was to be found a gradual growth or accre- 
tion of doctrinal heresy. The Church came on earth 
to represent the Lord of all, and, as He Himself 
said, "not to bring peace, but a sword"; "to kin- 
dle a fire on earth, and to separate father from child, 
and child from father." Even in the days of the 
apostles there were heresies, and all along the line 
of dogmatic battle there arose heresies — denial of 
the humanity of Christ, denial of the divinity of 
Christ, denial of the two natures in the one person 



10 

of the Incarnate Word, denial of the divinity of 
the Holy Ghost and of His office, denial of the 
sacramental system, denial of the powers of the 
Church, denial of the last great condescension of 
the man-God in the adorable Eucharist. In all 
these battles the Church had fought well ; yet see 
after see in the once glorious East went out, 
and its candlestick glimmered into utter darkness. 
With the Reformation came the denial of almost 
all the apostolic traditions. They broke the unity 
of the Church by refusing obedience to the Vicar 
of Christ, and the time came in the natural progress 
of events and the restless march of the human mind 
when some one should arise not simply to deny one 
article of the Christian faith but to deny that on 
which all the rest were founded, to lay suicidal 
hands, not on the capital of the fabric reared by 
Christian faith and hope, but on the base of the 
column itself, and to seek to destroy altogether the 
Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of 
the truth. 

The fundamental heresy of the Protestant Refor- 
mation was the denial of the Church. The Church 
is the body of Christ, the Church is the indivisible 
sacrament of unity with Christ, and through Christ 
with God, " Whosoever revolteth and hath not the 
doctrine of Christ, hath not God." And in denying 



11 

the Church, not only did the Reformers deny the 
sacramental system, and banish altogether from 
men's minds the very idea of an outward and visi- 
ble sign of an inward and invisible grace, but also 
they took from men the only voice which, speak- 
ing in the name of God, delivered the infallible 
truth. They left men to their unaided reason and 
to utter darkness. Men were rife for this immoral- 
ity ; rulers had risen up against each other ; they 
had long struggled against the Vicar of Christ in 
the field and in their cabinets, and now came the 
time when some one to the dry tinder should set 
the spark. The time came when some one should 
speak out that which had so long been in the minds 
of many, and say : "jl do not believe in One Holy 
Catholic and Apostolic Church. I deny the Church 
and her authority, and I reassert the right of men to 
follow in religion their own reason as sole and final 
judge" — a right, be it remembered, never known 
under any other form of revealed religion, a right 
never known even under the Jewish theocracy, and 
a right hardly ever exercised among the more en- 
lightened pngans. 

II. 

I proceed, then, to the second division of my lec- 
ture, and shall set before you, as briefly as I can, 



12 

the first beginnings of this Reformation, and the 
teachings of the so-called Reformers. As you are 
all probably aware, the first impetus to this move- 
ment came from Martin Luther, a monk of Witten- 
berg, who came from his retirement and preached 
against indulgences. You have no doubt heard it 
said that he preached against the sale of indul- 
gences. I need not say to you who are Catholics, 
and I hope not to any of you who are intelligent 
Protestants, that indulgences are never sold, and 
never can be sold ; and, in the second place, that 
indulgences are not a pardon of sin, and that they 
have nothing whatever to do with the pardon of 
sin. They are a remission of canonical penance 
imposed by the Church for sin forgiven. The sale 
of indulgences was never authorized by the Church, 
and never could be, for indulgence depends on pious 
works, and pious works can neither be sold nor 
bought. You have perhaps heard that Luther acci- 
dentally found a bible on a musty shelf, and there 
all of a sudden had brought before his mind the 
great truths of revelation. The simple truth is 
this : that Luther was an Augustinian monk ; that 
he had been severely trained, and had been taught 
the Scriptures all his life ; that even in a seminary 
he had professed the Scriptures, and, therefore, it' he 
olid not know them well it was his own fault. As a 



13 

priest, in the Divine Office every day lie was obliged 
to read large portions of the Holy Scriptures. The 
true state of this controversy is this : At that time 
the Pope was rebuilding the church of St. Peter, and 
among the alms that were required of those who 
would gain the indulgence of the Church was an 
offering to be expended in behalf of the most lauda- 
ble object of restoring that great and central temple 
of Christianity. Those alms, so given, could have no 
effect as an indulgence unless they were accompa- 
nied with a proper disposition, with true contrition 
and earnest sorrow for sin, and with whatever other 
conditions were required by the Church. This in- 
dulgence was preached throughout the Christian 
world ; and it so happened that the principal 
preacher in Germany was a Dominican monk, and 
Luther was jealous of the position given to what 
might be called a rival, and being a man of an in- 
flammable disposition and of a jealous heart, he was 
moved to inveigh against the doctrine of indul- 
gences without fully knowing whither he was tend- 
ing. First he preached indirectly against the doc- 
trine, then more directly he denied the power of the 
Church to grant an indulgence, thereby assailing 
directly the power of the keys given to the Church 
of God and the Vicar of Christ. " What thou shalt 
bind on earth shall be bound in heayen ? and what 



14 

tliou slialt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven, 
and I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven.'' From this he went on step by step, until, 
as we shall soon see, he was ready to deny almost 
every article of the Christian faith, and to set up in 
its stead an altogether new and unheard-of religion. 
He was like the reed blown by the wind from 3iis 
beginning to his sad end. He was continually vary- 
ing and unstable, a mystery to all his friends and a 
trial to all who cared for him. Now he said one 
thing, and now another. Now he professed a most 
direct obedience to the Holy See, and now he turned 
and called him Antichrist, and almost in the same 
breath he uttered contradictions. Now he denied 
that he professed anything new, or that in any re- 
spect he was called upon by the Holy Ghost to the 
work which he had assumed. Again, he declared 
that he was a messenger from on high, that he had 
been wrestling with the devil, and that he was going 
forth in the power of the Most High to reform and 
purify Christianity. 

As there are historical points which are of great 
importance in this connection, and as it will be more 
convincing to you to hear the language of his own 
friends, or his own language, than to hear mine, I 
propose to set before you, in the words of the Re- 
formers themselves, not only their own account of 



15 

their doctrine and their movement, but also the sub- 
stance of their religious teaching, and I will beg 
your earnest attention to them. Though it may not 
be so directly interesting, yet, after all, it is the most 
important part of the lecture. In regard to the vari- 
ations of Luther and his continual changes I read his 
own words : 

''•How often has my conscience disturbed me? 
How often have I said to myself, dost thou imagine 
thyself wiser than all the rest of mankind % Darest 
thou imagine that all mankind have been in error for 
so long a series of years ? " 

11 1 am not so bold as to assert that I have been 
guided in this affair by God ; upon this point I 
would not wish to undergo the judgment of God." 

The following are his words addressed to Pope 
Leo X., in a letter written by his own hand, and 
some time after the progress of his Reformation : 

"Most Holy Father, I throw myself at the feet of 
your Holiness and submit myself to you with all that 
I have and all that I am. Destroy my cause or 
espouse it ; pronounce either for or against me ; take 
my life or restore it, as you xxLease ; I will receive 
your voice as that of Christ Himself, who presides 
and speaks through you.- ' " I declare it in the pres- 
ence of God and of all the world ; I never have 
sought and I never will seek to weaken by force or 



10 

artifice tlio power of the Roman Church or of your 
Holiness. I confess there is no tiling in heaven or 
earth that should be preferred above that Church, 
save only Jesus Christ the Lord of all." 

The teachings of the three principal Reformers may 
be condensed in what I am now about to say. 
Martin Luther was born in Eisleben, in Saxony, in 
1483. He entered the Augustinian convent at Erfurt 
in 1505 ; made his profession and was ordained priest 
in 1507. He was a student of Scripture, and even a 
professor of Scripture. Beginning to preach against 
the doctrine of indulgences, he went from one point 
to another until there was scarcely any truth of 
revelation that he did not either ignore or deny. 
The following is the substance of his doctrine : 

1. Original sin has so depraved man that he is not 
capable of doing good. 

2. Justification depends upon faith alone, which he 
made the belief of a man that he was justified, or the 
consciousness of pardon. 

3. Free-will is not to be acknowledged in any 
actions relating to God. 

4. There are no really good works, and all the 
works, even of the justified, have the nature of sin. 

5. The Church is the congregation of the justified, 
and therefore invisible to man. 

6. Confession of sin is not necessary. 



7. Veneration of the saints is unlawful. ] 

8. Denial of transubstantiation and assertion for 
the Lutherans of a kind of consubstantiation. 

9. The Holy Scriptures to be submitted to the indi- 
vidual judgment as a rale of faith. 

I do not by any means intend to assert that these 
points of Luther's doctrine were advanced by him in 
any order or in any method or system of faith. 
They were the points to which he arrived after the 
years of his constant variation. One of the favorite 
doctrines of the Reformers, and one which lay at the 
basis of their creed of immorality, was the denial of 
free-will ; asserting that man by original sin was so 
totally depraved that he no longer possessed the 
prerogatives of a free man. Then, the will having 
lost its power, there was no proper merit or demerit. 

Now permit me to read to you the very language 
of Luther in regard to free-will, and if you have ever 
heard anything more immoral, anything more revolt- 
ing, anything more shocking to the common sense of 
the Christian heart, I do not know where you have 
heard it : 

"Man is like a horse. Does God leap into the 
saddle \ The horse is obedient and accommodates it- 
self to every movement of the rider, and goes whither 
he wills it. Does God throw down the reins ? Then 
Satan leaps upon the back of the animal, which 



13 

bends, goes, and submits to the spurs and caprices of 
its new rider. The will cannot choose its rider, and 
cannot kick against the spur that pricks it. It must 
get on, and its very docility is a disobedience or a 
sin. The only struggle possible is between the two 
riders, who dispute the momentary possession of the 
steed. Let the Christian then know that God foresees 
nothing contingently ; but that he foresees, proposes, 
and acts from His eternal and immutable will. 
This is the thunderbolt that shatters and destroys 
free-will. Hence it comes to pass that whatever hap- 
pens, happens according to the irreversible decrees 
of God. Therefore necessity, not free-will, is the 
controlling principle of our conduct. God is the 
author of what is evil in us as well as of what is 
good, and as He bestows happiness on those who 
merit it not, so also does He damn others who 
deserve not their fate." 

Again, he says : " Sin vigorously, but more vigor- 
ously trust in Christ, who is the victor of sin. We 
must sin as long as we are in this world." 

This accords with his theory of an unreal justifica- 
tion by imputation of the merits of Christ. He 
writes to Melancthon that "the justified man may 
be guilty of fornication or murder a thousand times 
a day, and still not lose his justification." 

The second Reformer, a man who had very great 



19 

influence on the Continent in the formation of the 
minds of men, who perhaps had as much or more 
influence than Luther, was Ulrich Zwingli. He was 
born in 1484. He was a priest in the diocese of Con- 
stance in 1506. He followed in the steps of Luther 
in Switzerland, though he was obliged to resign the 
care of souls on account of his open immorality. 
He began his preaching against the Church in 1519, 
and against indulgences and the authority of the 
Holy See. His doctrines may be thus briefly 
summed up : 

Holy Scripture the only source of faith. 

The authority of popes and bishops had its origin 
in pride and usurpation. 

There is no sacrifice other than that of Christ, of 
which the Mass is only a commemoration. 

We have no need of the intercession of the 
saints. 

Confession is only a method of giving and receiv- 
ing counsel. 

The doctrine of purgatory is unscriptural. 

Priests and monks may marry whenever they 
choose. 

Human free-will is totally annihilated. 

The sacraments are empty signs, and do not con- 
fer grace of themselves. 

Speaking of the loss of free-will, Zwingli says: 



20 

"I will indulge my sinful desires, and, whatever I 
shall do, God is the author of it. It is by the ordi- 
nation of God that this man is a parricide and that 
man an adulterer." 

He incited the Protestant cantons in Switzerland to 
rebellion, and he himself died at Cappel in 1531, 
having gone to the battle in complete armor as a sol- 
dier, and bearing in the fray the standard of the city. 

John Calvin was another Reformer, whose weird 
and fearful doctrines have had their effect not only 
on the age around him, but on succeeding ages. He 
was born at Noyon, in Picardy, in 1509. He studied 
for the Church, but gave up his studies early, on ac- 
count of his infamous morals. He advocated the 
teachings of Luther at the Sorbonne, in Paris. He 
appeared at Basle in 1534, where he wrote his "Insti- 
tutes of the Christian Religion." He drew to him 
many followers at Geneva, where he set up his new 
worship in 1538. Expelled by the patriots, he re- 
turned in 1541, and became almost a civil and eccle- 
siastical despot. 

Balsec was banished for assailing his doctrine of 
predestination. 

Ameaux was cast into prison because he had spo- 
ken disrespectfully of him. 

He ordered the execution of Gruet in lc48 because 
he threatened him. 



21 

Grentilis, who combated Calvin's views on the Tri- 
nity, was beheaded at Berne in 1566. 

Servetus was seized and burned at the stake by his 
order in 1553. 

His system was an absolute predestination, and 
taught that free-will no longer had an existence, and 
that God was the author of man's sin. "Man falls 
into sin," said he, "the providence of God so order- 
ing it." He denied transubstantiation, though 
speaking equivocally of the effect of the sacra- 
ment. 

These three principal Reformers were seconded by 
many others, but they were the leaders, and upon 
their followers they impressed their character and 
the effect of their system. Their work was one, as 
you will see, of destruction, and not of reformation. 
A reformation is the preservation of something. 
Here, in the work of these Reformers, is the destruc- 
tion of everything, for there is scarcely an article of 
the Christian faith left untouched ; and in their 
treatment of God and His revelation to mankind 
they had so destroyed the freedom of mans will 
that they sapped the very foundations of morality. 
If man hath not a free will, where is his responsibili- 
ty? Is it just for God to punish a man who is not 
free to obey or disobey? And if man be so de- 
praved, what a mockery to attempt to justify him 



22 

and call him righteous before God! There is only 
one justification of these views of the Reformers and 
of their movement, and that is the one to which I 
alluded in the opening of my lecture. They were 
either the messengers of God or the messengers of 
the devil. If they were the messengers of God, 
they would, according to all the rules of evidence, be 
authenticated by signs and wonders, as God authen- 
ticated His prophets and His apostles and His teach- 
ers in the ages all along. But, while there was no 
pretence of miracles, there was not even innocence 
or purity of life. Does God deal with such men as 
His instruments \ Are immoral and unholy persons 
apt to be chosen by the Spirit of God as the leaders 
in a religious reformation? 

III. 

The third division of my lecture leads me briefly 
to set before you the character of the Reformers. 
And here, again, lest perhaps some might think 
that I might be prejudiced if I were to use my own 
language, I prefer, in every word I shall read to you 
respecting these Reformers, to set before you the 
statements of their own friends. First, in regard 
to Luther, Melancthon says of him, and Melanc- 
thon was his particular friend and agent : "I trem- 



ble when I think of the passions of Luther ; they 
yield not in violence to the passions of Hercules." 
Melancthon had good reason to deplore the passions 
of Luther, for more than once he received personal 
violence and beating from the hands of Luther, and 
was himself mild enough to take it gently. Another 
brother Reformer says that "he was possessed not 
only by one but by a whole troop of devils," and 
that "he wrote all his works by the impulse and 
the dictation of the devil." Luther himself says 
that he had a conference with the devil, w r hose argu- 
ments he was unable to answer. 

He says: "Unless we have the devil hanging 
about our necks we are nothing but speculative theo- 



logians." 



His adversaries are continually assailed in his 
writings, and the terms "asses" and "devils" are 
the constant epithets which he uses in regard to 
them. 

As regards Luther's immorality, his indecency 
and vulgarity in conversation were notorious. If 
any one be anxious to know the truth of this he 
might read some of the editions of Luther's "Table- 
Talk." I could not repeat anything of this, nor 
could I advise anybody to read, for in impurity and 
vulgarity they surpass even some of the obscene 
books of modern days. This vulgarity was not con- 



u 

filled to his table-talk, but even sometimes came out 
in his discourses. When lie would speak on the 
power of passion, or of marriage and divorce, lan- 
guage offensive to every modest, not to say to every 
Christian, heart would come from his lips. 

For several years, from 1525 to 1540, he passed 
nearly all his evenings at the Black Eagle Tavern, 
in Wittenberg, where his friends surrounded him, 
and with whom he passed the nights in drinking and 
in frivolity. 

In 1524 he marries Catharine Bora, an apostate 
nun, thus scandalizing his intimate friends, who 
surely were not easily scandalized. There are fur- 
ther accusations of crime on which here we will not 
dwell. 

He confesses himself a glutton and a drunkard. 
Thus, writing to his wife in 1540 : "I am feeding like 
a Bohemian and swilling like a German, thanks be 
to God." V 

Count Hoyer, of Mansfeld, wrote in 1522 to Count 
Ulrich, of Helfenstein : "I have been all along, as 
I was at Worms, a good Lutheran, but I have learn- 
ed that Luther is a blackguard and as good a drunk- 
ard as there is in Mansfeld, delighting to be in the 
company of beautiful women, and to play upon his 
flute. His conduct is ^unbecoming, and he seems 
irretrievably t fallen.' ' 



2b 

"In speaking of marriage, the most sacred of 
social institutions, lie gave utterance to thoughts so 
indecent, in language so coarse and revolting, that 
one seeks in vain to find an apology for him in the 
lax morals of that lax age." * 

Dissatisfied, according to his own avowal, with 
his religious system, he had the further mortification 
of knowing that it had a still more uncertain hold 
upon the minds of his former adherents. 

In Wittenberg, as early as 1532, he makes this 
candid confession : 

' ' Since we have begun to preach our doctrine the 
world has grown daily worse, more impious, and 
more shameless. Men are now beset by legions of 
devils, and while enjoying the full light of the 
Gospel are more avaricious, more impure and re- 
pulsive than of old, under the papacy. Peasants 
and nobles are all alike slaves to avarice, drunken- 
ness, gluttony, and impurity, and given over to 
shameful excesses and abominable passions." f 

After drinking and feasting with his friends on 
the death of Paul III., he was taken suddenly ill 
on February 17, 1546, and died on the following 
night. His last hours were like the life he had led. 
There was no sign of repentance, or a wish to retract. 

* xllzog, III. 101. f Ibid. 127, 



26 

Among his last words were these broken sentences : 
"My sins — death— the devil, give me no rest." 

What a life ! What a death ! Such a death was 
the worthy end of such a life. While a Catholic 
he had passed his time in austerities, in watchings, 
in fasts, and in prayer, in poverty, chastity, and 
obedience. When he had abandoned the Church 
lie says of himself that he was no longer able to 
resist the vilest propensities. " He was," says Slei- 
dan, a Protestant historian of the time, "so well 
aware of his immorality, as we are informed by his 
favorite disciple, Melancthon, that he wished that 
they would remove him from the office of preach- 
ing." 

As for the character of Zwingli, "he was from 
the opening of his career light-minded and frivo- 
lous and a slave to sensual pleasures." "He was 
obliged to resign his care of souls in consequence 
of his connection with a woman of notorious and 
profligate character becoming public." 

"In 1522 he demanded from the Bishop of Con- 
stance a general permission for priests to marry." 
He married in that year a widow, without any 
permission. "Your lordship," he candidly said, 
"knows very well how disgraceful my conduct 
heretofore has been, and how my crimes have 
been the ruin and scandal of man v." 



27 

Helzer, one of his confederates, was subsequent- 
]y belieaded for his numerous adulteries. 

As for the character of John Calvin, we have al- 
ready seen that his morals were infamous and his 
early life dissolute. We need not be surprised that 
he invented the system of predestination, by which 
the elect could be saved without good works. 

As for the morals of the new minister and his 
disciples we take his own testimony : 

" The pastors themselves, who mount the pulpit, 
are at this time the most shameful examples of 
waywardness and other vices. Hence their ser- 
mons obtain neither more credit nor authority than 
the fictitious tales uttered on the stage by the 
strolling player. I am astonished that the women 
and children do not cover them with mud and 
filth." 

And Martin Bucer, another of the Reformers, who 
had married three wives in succession, bears this 
true testimony: "The greater part of the people 
seem to have embraced the Gospel only to shake 
off the yoke of discipline, and to live at their 
pleasure, enjoying their lust and their lawless ap- 
petites without control. They therefore lend a 
willing ear to the doctrine that we are justified by 
faith alone and not by good works. Laving no re- 
lish for them." 



. 2S 

I The sect of Anabaptists deserve a passing notice, 
because they are a genuine fruit of the Keforma- 
tion, and, though the excess of the movement, yet 
legitimately connected with the Eeformers. There 
is not time here to notice their history at length, 
nor the revolutions which they fomented. They 
were vehemently opposed, and even persecuted, by 
the Protestant leaders, yet, on the principle of pri- 
vate judgment, they cannot be reproved. They 
have as much right to their opinions as Luther 
and Calvin. They held to a community of pro- 
perty and to polygamj'. The obligations of mat- 
rimony were declared invasive of spiritual liberty, 
and freedom of divorce and licentiousness followed. 
On the propriety of polygamy Luther was not 
much at variance with this fanatical and licentious 
sect. 

"For my part,-' he says, "I candidly confess 
that I could not prohibit any one who might wish 
it to take many wives at once, nor is this repug- 
nant to the Holy Scriptures." 

The celebrated document, signed by the princi- 
pal Eeformers, permitting Philip, the Landgrave of 
Hesse, to live in adultery, is another evidence of 
their morality. By this they committed them- 
selves to polygamy, and the pretended marriage 
was celebrated by a Hessian preacher, Denis Me- 



29 

lander, who, himself having taken three wives, 
was well qualified for the ceremony. Melancthon, 
Bncer, and other theologians were present. 

This state of morality among the Reformers may, 
perhaps, explain their sympathy with the Turks, 
then threatening Europe. " To fight against the 
Turk is to resist God," said Luther, "for they 
are His instruments in chastising our iniquities." 

I shall only add the testimony of Erasmus, who 
was a friend of Luther, and, to a certain extent, 
a helper of his work, though Erasmus could not 
follow Luther in all the variations of his error: 
" Those whom I have known," said he, "to be 
pure, full of candor and simplicity, when they had 
gone over to the Gospelers, I have seen changed 
from men to vipers." "I see many Lutherans but 
few Evangelicals. Look a little at these people and 
say whether luxury, avarice, and lewdness do not 
prevail still more among them than among those 
whom they detest. Show me one who by means 
of this Gospel is become better ; I will show you 
very many who have become worse." 

IV. 

The last division of my lecture this evening leads 
me to sum up the sources of the success of the Re- 
formation. If there are those who pretend to say 



30 

that success is the criterion of. virtue or of truth, 
it is only endorsing the principle, so often revered 
in our day, that might makes right. There is no 
error more gross than that which asserts that be- 
cause a cause or a movement succeeds it is from 
God. The Reformation did succeed ; it spread far 
and wide with all its devastation, and like the star 
which fell from heaven and made one-third part 
of the waters bitter, it destroyed the consolations 
of faith to many hearts and many minds and many 
ages. God only knows how long the effects of that 
error will last. God only knows how long the cur- 
rent started at the time of the Reformation will run 
on to ruin many souls. But that success, to be a 
criterion of truth, must come from God, and its 
source must not be from the evil will of man or 
from pernicious causes. The success of Christianity 
in the world was a proof of its divine origin and 
its divine power, because it directly attacked every 
natural impulse and all the power of human pas- 
sion ; because from the very beginning were arrayed 
against it the world and all its forces ; because, in 
spite of the passions of man, and in spite of sword 
and flaming steel, it went on conquering and to 
conquer, until it possessed in peace the nations of 
the earth. But Protestantism finds the sources of 
its sucoess first of all in its appeal to our natural 



31 

desire for liberty and the wish to be free from re- 
straint. This is the depravation of the intelli- 
gence, the denial of God and His divine truth. 
God does not speak to me directly. It would 
be presumption to suppose that I receive a direct 
revelation from God. It would be a contradiction 
of the divine plan, which operates always accord- 
ing to His institutions and according to the social 
system for the benefit of mankind. If, therefore, I 
am to hear God, I must hear God in such a 
way as will secure my obedience ; and I obey, not 
because the doctrine revealed is convenient to my 
thoughts, or consentaneous to the associations of 
my life, or suited to my intellectual convictions, but 
simply because God tells me so. And so, under 
every form of religion before, under the patriarchal 
and under the Jewish, it was brought directly to 
mankind that God was speaking to them and should 
be implicitly obeyed. Now, the Reformation began 
at once by appealing to the intellect. " You shall 
be free; you shall think and feel and act without 
any law ; you shall experiment in the field of the- 
ology, as in the field of science, according to your oavii 
will. Break away from all restraint and come forth. 
Thus act, and find oat your God and your truth 
for yourselves." And this doctrine is dear to the 
human heart, because it sets up a worship of self- 



3*2 

will and a worship of one's own pride. This pre- 
vailed with very many, and faith went down under 
the delusion of human pride, and the revelation of 
God ceased to be known among those who set up 
for its immutable decrees and its unchangeable truth 
the impulses of their own minds. 

Secondly, another source of the progress of the 
Reformation and its success is to be found in the 
long and continued struggle of the temporal against 
the spiritual power. Rulers and princes took hold 
of the Reformation and they carried it on by fire 
and by sword. Revolutions were kindled by fana- 
tics ; rulers stepped in. They had resisted the Vicar 
of Christ. Long they had been obliged to bend 
down under his unchanging sceptre, and now, when 
the world was inflamed with this desire for freedom, 
they stepped in and lifted up their standards, and, 
as we shall see in the second lecture, upon the ruins 
of Christianity they built a despotism more bind- 
ing and more absolute than in the former days of 
the Roman Empire. They not only claimed for 
themselves the right of temporal power, but the 
right to govern the Church of God. And so the 
Reformation, like the movement of Mohammed, was 
carried on by flaming artillery and by the sword, 
and men on every side bowed down to the mightier 
force, and, because rulers and princes led it, the 



33 

Reformation spread widely through their dominions. 
Indeed, as we shall see hereafter, even in this course 
of Advent lectures, to kings and to princes and to 
their arbitrary- decrees was owing the spread of 
these new doctrines. 

Lastly, the great source of the success of the re- 
formed doctrines is to be found in its direct appeal 
to all the worst passions of human nature. Starting 
at the denial of free-will ; with the assurance of the 
impossibility of man to govern his own passions ; 
asserting his continual sinfulness, even in spite of 
the Spirit of God ; denying any possibility of purity 
or holiness ; declaring that man, struggle as he might, 
was ever tainted and ever spotted in the sight of 
God, they went on to give full range to every licen- 
tious appetite. And the history of the Reformation, 
as you have seen to-night, and as admitted by the 
historians of the time, and who belonged to the move- 
ment and were its friends, only presents to the world 
the bringing in of an immorality and a lewdness 
and licentiousness that have hardly been equalled 
in pagan days. I cannot read to you in a sacred 
place like this, in the presence of the incarnate God, 
the source of all purity and light, the accounts of 
the immoralities which in these reformed countries 
were daily committed, according to the testimony of 
historians among the Protestants themselves. Bv 



34 

common consent, everything that was high and noble 
and religious was blotted out ; asceticism was denied 
as something offensive to God ; lives of purity, lives 
of virtue, lives of separation from the world and all 
its seductions and the counsels of perfection were 
laughed and jeered at ; monks and priests vowed 
to God by the holiest obligations came into the 
arena, and married or lived in concubinage with wo- 
men, and this was not only a common occurrence, 
but almost always the direct result of embracing 
the new doctrines. Scarcely a priest who aposta- 
tized in that sad day did not take to himself a wife ; 
scarcely a nun who left her seclusion did not marry, 
even in spite of her vows. Call you this an ascent 
towards God, or a descent towards the abyss? Let 
it be what you will, it was not a movement in the 
direction of purity or holiness. And if men retort 
the argument, and say to us, "Even among Catho- 
lics you have men and women of unholy lives, even 
at the altar there are bad priests," I answer, " Yes ; 
God in His infinite mercy pardon our offences!" 
But if there are bad Catholics, and, worst of all, bad 
priests, it is not because the Church allows it, but 
because, in spite of her doctrine, and in spite of her 
denunciations, and in spite of her discipline, the 
human heart runs in the way of transgression. But 
the reform movement began in principle, in theory, 



and in practice by taking down every barrier to the 
gratification of human passion, and left the evil will 
to run rampant in licentiousness and lewdness. So 
if Mohammed bought followers by permitting poly- 
gamy and concubinage, if Mohammed gathered to 
himself among the ignorant those who were willing 
to embrace his doctrines ; what say you of priests and 
nuns, and even devoted and pious Catholics, who 
forsook altogether the strict teachings of their reli- 
gion, and began to live on the principle that their 
passions could not be overcome, and that, having 
no free-will, they were neither called to work good 
works, nor had they the power to do so. A religion, 
therefore, which builds itself on the appeal to human 
liberty, a religion which rests on' the strong arm of a 
secular prince, a religion that appeals to man' s un- 
bridled passions, is not a religion from God, and if it 
succeed it cannot call that success a criterion of its 
honesty or its truth. 

In the retrospect of this sad history — so sad to 
many hearts, so sad to many souls now in the eter- 
nal abyss of the lost, separated from the God they 
denied and whom on earth they did not know — in 
the retrospect of this sad history, I can only quote 
the words of our Divine Master to you, as they are 
founded in reason and in the very nature of things, 
and sanctioned by His own divine word: "Judge 



30 



the tree by its fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth 
evil fruit ; nor can an evil tree bring forth good fruit. 
By their fruits, therefore, shall ye know them and 
judge them." 






the 



Protestant Reformation. 

n, WLtttuvt 

DELIVERED IN ST. ANN'S CHURCH 

ON 

SUNDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 1, 1S78, 






BY THE 

VERY REV. THOMAS S. PEESTOX, Y.G. 



Stenographically Reported for the Publisher 



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1878. 
_;. 



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